Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

by Steve Curtin Narrated by Sean Pratt

Overview

When asked what their work entails, most employees list the duties or tasks associated with their job roles. Very few refer to the true essence of their job, their highest priority at work: to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others. Without this customer focus, all that exists is a transaction-and transactional service does not make a lasting positive impression or inspire loyalty. Delight Your Customers reveals three truths common to all exceptional customer service experiences and presents seven behaviors that, when demonstrated by employees, distinguish extraordinary customer service from the ordinary transactional customer service to which consumers have become accustomed. With real-world stories and more than 200 examples from a variety of industries, this audiobook is a resource that will help listeners everywhere take their customer service from ordinary to extraordinary!

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Consultant Curtin offers a cheerful though obvious jaunt through the basics of customer service. Great customer service isn’t a Herculean task, he notes; people don’t want the wheel reinvented—they want solid, courteous service. To get there, managers should focus on helping employees understand the difference between the two sides of their jobs: job function (the daily tasks of work) and job essence (the true priorities of the job). Job function, in other words, is “sweep the store”; job essence is “pay attention to detail.” Customer service must be made the most important aspect of each employee’s job. Curtin uses case studies to illuminate his process for reaching those all-important repeat purchasers who provide positive word of mouth: express genuine interest, offer sincere and specific compliments, share unique knowledge, convey authentic enthusiasm, use appropriate humor, provide pleasant surprises, and deliver service heroics. While his approach is solid—personalize your service to each customer, and treat customers like guests in your home—the content is slim and unoriginal, and anyone seeking the skills to provide excellent customer service will likely already understand his advice. Agent: Michael Snell, Michael Snell Literary Agency. (June)

From the Publisher

"If you want to delight your customers, then the new book Delight Your Customers is a must-read for you and your employees." --Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

..". written from a fresh point of view..packed with a lot of details and comparisons to help you understand what is ordinary and what is extraordinary." --CXJourney

..".great new book called Delight Your Customers.The author talks about great customer service, how important it is, and how to deliver it. You really should pick it up." --PCB007

..".must-read for small or mega-businesses who want to offer such amazing service to their customers or clients that they will be more than delighted to come back again..." --BookPleasures.com

Customer Service Newsletter Best Customer Service Books of 2013

"If you are serious about elevating the level of service in your organization, this is your book...Read it and begin your journey from ordinary to extraordinary." --9InchMarketing

"The age of service enlightenment has arrived with Steve Curtin's Delight Your Customers." --Ken Shelton, Sales and Service Excellence

"This is a book that every customer service professional should read and every manager should model." --Portland Book Review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169558647
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	07/02/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Introduction Years ago, I worked in New York City with an English woman named Karen who had a unique work history. During graduate school in England, she had worked on an assembly line in a factory that manufactured dolls. Karen's job role was to attach doll heads to each of the torsos as they passed by on a long conveyer belt. As she described it, as the torso approached, she would lift a doll head from a large bin, pop the head on the torso, and twist it firmly until it locked into place. One by one, Karen would lift, pop, and twist the dolls' heads into place—each one like the last one—until her quota was met or her shift ended. The next day, she would return and repeat the process over and over again: lift, pop, twist . . . lift, pop, twist . . . until the end of another workday. I can still hear Karen describing her job duties in her refined British accent: "Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . ." To this day, whenever I observe an employee who is simply going through the motions, I'm reminded of Karen's job at the factory. I refer to this demeanor as a factory mentality. Perhaps you too have observed this outward behavior by service industry employees. It's easy to spot, characterized by indifference and a transactional approach to serving customers. Expressionless, robotic behavior devoid of any personality may be permissible in a factory or warehouse environment where there are no signs of real, live, paying customers (as long as certain production quotas and delivery schedules are met). However, in a customer service job role, employee behavior must be different. This is not a book about how to "WOW!" customers by continually surpassing their expectations and exceeding their needs—which is unsustainable. Most people don't want "outrageous" or "over-the-top" customer service at every turn. In everyday service situations, most customers simply want to be acknowledged and appreciated. Delight Your Customers is about doing the little things that convey to customers that they matter and that their business is valued. It's about breaking with routine by consistently providing the "little extras" that leave lasting positive impressions on customers. After all, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little "extra." Part I sets the stage for delighting customers by identifying the two dimensions of every employee's job role and identifying three truths of exceptional customer service. Whether you are new to the service industry or a seasoned veteran, this section will expand your definition of employees' roles and is likely to influence the way you manage service providers. Part II introduces seven concrete behaviors that will enable you to immediately improve the quality of customer service you provide or influence. These seven simple ways to raise customer service from ordinary to extraordinary are natural and intuitive. Rather than offering scripts or a prescriptive acronym that requires employees to be someone they're not, these behaviors encourage employees to be themselves at their best! Part III provides fresh thinking about incorporating your organization's highest priority into existing employee functions so that ­exceptional customer service, however it is defined by your particular organization, occurs consistently rather than being left to chance. Throughout the book, you will see references to customers, clients, guests, shoppers, passengers, patients, members, and more. The lessons in this book will apply, regardless of how you refer to your customers, even if your "customer" is an employee, owner, vendor, or other stakeholder. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these lessons also apply to the "customers" you serve in your personal life, whether that means a spouse, children, friends, neighbors—even complete strangers. Each chapter concludes with a bulleted summary of key insights to assist you in raising customer service from ordinary to extraordinary, followed by a brief application exercise in which you immediately record top-of-mind ideas about applying lessons from the chapter in your world of work. It's no secret that the customer service quality most of us experience in our daily lives tends to be pretty mediocre. (And sometimes that assessment is being generous.) It's my aspiration to contribute to the conversation about raising customer service quality—and this book is a start. To continue the conversation, I invite you to visit my blog at http://www.stevecurtin.com/blog/ or email me: [e-mail]

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